Karen Barkey is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (1994).Mark von Hagen is associate professor of history and the director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (1990). Karen Barkey is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (1994).Mark von Hagen is associate professor of history and the director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (1990).

• How Empires End -- The End of Empires -- Collapse of Empires: Causes -- Thinking About Empire -- The Ottoman Empire -- The Habsburg Empire -- The Russian Empire -- The Soviet Union -- Collapse of Empires: Consequences -- Thinking About Consequences of Empire -- The Ottoman Empire -- The Habsburg Empire -- The Russian Empire -- Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples -- Conclusion